Rambo (2007) 9/10

I grew up on Sylvester Stallone, watching films like Over The Top, Rocky (all of em), First Blood, Cobra and many many more. The guy fills a special place in my heart along with Van Damme, and Arnold. I recently went back and re-watched the Rambo Trilogy to be all Rambo-ed up for this newest feature. I had very high expectations after seeing the gore filled teaser several months ago and after watching all the previous films. I also really enjoyed Rocky Balboa so the bar was set high to say the least.

Did the film meet my expectations? Two words: HELL YES!

Rambo sees our titular character living simply in Thailand as a fisherman/blacksmith/snake catcher. After watching the previous films this makes perfect sense because Rambo was never able to fit into normal modern American society after the Vietnam War. Living out in the jungle is in his blood. A group of missionaries come to him to take them up the river into Burma in his boat so that they can give medical attention to the Karen Rebels that are being killed by the Burmese army. This is actually happening as we speak. There is a huge civil war going on and has been going on for 60 years. Stallone picked Burma to shoot and set the film to draw more attention to the conflict there. It sounds far fetched but he really wanted to do some good with Rambo and more power to him. In the beginning of the film during the credits we see numerous pictures and video footage of real victims of the war. He's trying to tell us that although the film is a ficition, these things do actually happen, if not this dramatically.

The story is totally solid as one might expect since Stallone co-wrote the film and all of his best films are penned by him. (First blood and Rocky being two of them). But is the action as extreme as the original trailer shows?

Yup. This is hands down the most graphically violent film I have ever seen in the theater. I have no idea how this passed through the MPAA in it's current form. People are burned alive, shot in half, decapitated, blown up, raped, dismembered, disemboweled, you name it, it's here. Children even die for crying out loud. We see the Burmese army wreaking atrocity after atrocity, so when Rambo gets into action the viewer wants all of the evil miltary personel to die horrible deaths. And indeed they do. Once the action starts it doesn't let up. The last shootout in the film was espeicailly brutal and especially long. I figured the final act would be a cop out but no, it really delivers. The final ending to the film is also very satisfying.

Overall if you don't go see this in the theatre, you're fool. Period. I've already seen it in the theatre and I may go again, and i've never done that in my life. This movie is gold.

Gore- tons

Nudity- none

Overall - 9/10